Founding and Managing EditorRosita Nunes, a graduate of the USF MFA in Writing program, has always had a hand in startups, transitions and turnarounds. She has had many titles over the years: Board Member, Board Secretary, Executive Director, Development Director, Business Women's Expo Cofounder, Marketing Communications Consultant--but no title means more than this one. Switchback is a project to be proud of, thanks to a continuing flow of talent coming together to bring it life. Now that Switchback has grown beyond concept and fledgling project, she'll move on to her final revision of her young adult novel.

Co-Founding Technical EditorAlex Davis has an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. He has poems forthcoming in Five Fingers Review. He has a tattoo with hidden meaning.

Assistants to the Managing EditorJennifer Marston is a first year MFA in Writing student at the University of San Francisco. She is Marketing and Special Projects Manager for XLR8R Magazine and writer for Flavorpill. She has been a reader for Zoetrope along with other projects.

Karen Boyden Phelps resides in the East Bay and hopes to soak up all the good literary mojo floating around the Bay Area through osmosis. At the moment, she works at Diablo Magazine. Her poems have been published in Scribendi, Conceptions Southwest, and The Albion Review. She's in her second year of the MFA program at USF, class of 2007.

Associate Editors:

Nathan Grover is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing at USF and has worked for Switchback reading prose and finding artwork since Issue #2. He also sings and plays guitar in the San Francisco indie rock band Love is Chemicals.

Marisela Treviņo Orta holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. A poet and playwright, her first play Braided Sorrow was read at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2005 and will be read in August 2006 as part of the Ford Amphitheatre's Summer Reading Series in Los Angeles. In March 2006 Marisela participated in the 8th Annual Women's Will 24-HourPlayfest. For the festival her 10-Minute play Watch Out For Falling Sky was written, rehearsed and performed in less than one day. Her poetry has appeared in Red River Review, Curbside Review, BorderSenses, Pomona Valley Review, Traverse, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Double Room. Her literary blog is http://www.xanga.com/mtorta.

Craig Perez is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at USF. His work has appeared in Watchword, Signal, Quercus and the Redlands Review. His blog is www.blindelephant.blogspot.com.

Alika Tanaka moved from San Diego to San Francisco in 1995 and recently won first place in the Backwards City Review Fiction Contest. She fluctuates between short and long forms of fiction and how they work with her reoccurring dreams. She currently is finishing her MFA at the University of San Francisco.

Jay Thomas is a first-year student in the MFA program at USF, and assists the Technical Editor with putting Switchback online. His poems have appeared in SPORE 2.0 and mipoesias.com.

Elizabeth Valente is starting her second year in the MFA program at USF. Originally from Maine, her interests (besides writing) include art, running, traveling, and devising ways to become permanently bi-coastal.

Faculty Advisors:

Stephen Beachy (Content Advisor) is the author of two novels, The Whistling Song and Distortion. His novellas, Some Phantom and No Time Flat, will be published by Suspect Thoughts Press in 2006. He has been teaching at USF since 1999. Check out his website: www.livingjelly.com.

Chris Brooks (Computer Services Advisor) is Assistant Professor of Computer Science. He received his BA/JBA from the University of Wisconsin, his MS from San Francisco State University in 1997, and his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2002. His areas of interest include multiagent systems, information economics, electronic commerce, and machine learning.